The mother of Sgt. Ryan David Jopek had given Obama the wristband "so that he would know my son's name." Apparently it didn't help.

When Obama began using the bracelet as a prop on the campaign trail, the Jopeks asked him to stop wearing it. He chose not to comply- and used it as a prop in the debate, with somewhat less effect than he had probably hoped.

I find it fascinating that the media haven't reported this. You can be absolutely certain that it would have been a front page item if a Republican candidate pulled a stunt this cynical and shameless.

ADDENDUM: I've been carrying on a spirited but I think rather civil exchange with an Obama supporter named Paul in the comments on this post.

It is commonly said that the 1960 presidential election hinged on the first debate between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon.

If so, the comparisons between Barack Obama and Kennedy took a major hit last night.

David Yepsen of the Des Moines Register has more objectivity than most political editors of newspapers editorially so extreme in their politics. But still, it says a great deal when even the Register's house pundit has this to say about the whuppin' John McCain gave Obama last night in their first debate.

A mini-flap has arisen on the web over this You Tube snippet, which shows Republican vice-presidential candidate Gov. Sarah Palin being blessed by a visiting African pastor who prays- reflecting his own cultural understanding of the nature of evil- for her protection from witchcraft:

The hypocrisy of the "culturally sensitive" advocates of "diversity" on the left who mock this not only this minister, but Palin- a passive participant in the incident- is astounding. Whatever Palin's beliefs might or might not be, belief in witchcraft is widespread in Africa- as the elitist phonies who have tried to use this incident against Palin would doubtless have realized if they were nearly as serious about diversity and cultural sensititity as they pretend. And certanly the video above says absolutely nothing about Palin herself.

Here is a sensible article on the subject from the liberal Boston Herald.

I have no reason to doubt Barack Obama's explanations of his motivations in voting some of the strange ways he has during his career. There is nothing wrong with Obama trying to explain those motivations.

But explaining his motivations is a different thing from denying the facts.

The fact is that, whatever his motivations, Barack Obama helped kill a bill in the Illinois Senate requiring doctors to work to keep babies who survive attempted abortions alive. He says that he would have voted for it if it had contained language similar to that in a Federal law making it clear that it did not challenge Roe v. Wade.

Obama- a strong supporter of partial birth abortion, who cannot even affirm the scientific fact that life begins with cell division parallel processes virtually coincident with conception- has an established record as a pro-choice extremist even among Democrats. That doesn't …

The Democrats are making a major mistake by harping on Sarah Palin's inexperience- given the fact that Barack Obama is in the same boat (except that he has less, being an absentee legislator rather than a hands-on governor during his brief time in politics).

Anybody with any doubts that the moonbats are still very much in control of the Democratic party need to note that the unintentionally comic, over-the-top rhetoric which characterized the last campaign is back in spades- and is even being indulged in a former aide to Al Gore.

Ok. So Naomi Wolfe is his former fashion advisor.

And... well, you're right. Old Al himself... well, let's just say that his own rhetoric has been known on occasion to be as overheated as he preaches so loudly that the globe is becoming.

But Wolfe's nuttiness is no less frightening for the fact that she wasn't a policy person. The point is that there are millions of Americans out there, who look just like you and me, whose minds have also been taken over by this hate-filled, frothing at the mouth swill from outer space- and they're hungry!

After all, they've lost two presidential elections in a row.

Not only that, but they still haven't learned from the past two elections what effect this p…

It was only a matter of time before the Left started whining that the only thing that can beat Barack Obama is racism.

How about an irresponsible foreign policy, a global lack of qualifications to be president, and a lack of either substantive answers to the problems facing America, and a political ideology well out of the mainstream?

Mr. Rotschild greatly overestimates the value to the nation of an ability to send a thrill up Chris Matthews' leg- or anyone elses. And he apparently has learned nothing from 2004.

Moonbats are not the only ones who vote- or are apt to share Mr. Rothschild's distinctly moonbatty take on this election.

Despite Carlos Zambrano's embarrassing performance against the Cardinals yesterday (were we assuming too soon that the no-hitter last week meant that his arm was OK?), the Cubs magic number is now one.

If the Cubs win another game all season, or the Brewers lose another game, the Cubs will have clinched their first back-to-back post-season appearances since their consecutive National League pennants in 1906, 1907, and 1908.

They go for the clincher in about an hour at Wrigley, again against the Ruddy Pigeons. Ted Lilly, who one-hit the Astros last time out, will be on the mound.

During my days at that island of moral unreality called Wartburg Theological Seminary, I often noted how the quasi-pacifist religious Left not only was willing to make nice-nice with tyranny, but were sometimes willing to go the whole route and embrace it.

New examples have just been given us by several pacifist religious groups- and some interesting and revealing correspondence unearthed between one of their heroes, Mohandas Gandhi, and Adolph Hitler.

Matt Damon reads an obviously phony email allegedly from Sarah Palin on a late night talk show that calls dinosaurs "Satan's lizards."

Bill Maher contrasts the rationality of Christian believers six days a week with their going to church on Sunday and "believing that they're drinking the blood of a two thousand year old space god."

Richard Dawkins trumpets the alleged irrationality of religious beliefs, mustering the mighty power of the logical non sequitur in defense of his pious atheistic faith (and no, that phrase is assuredly not an oxymoron). Nowhere does he ever acknowledge the logical impossibility of proving a negative; his atheism is strictly a matter of sola fide.

Even while its political wing, the Democratic Party, gropes blindly for ways to mend fences with an imaginary post-modern constituency called "people of faith" (with no clue whatsoever that it's only in the content of their faith that such people can find any real commonality…

The Associated Press may have conceded defeat (that is, U.S. victory) in Iraq, but it apparently hasn't totally given up hope. It's trying with every bit of partisan fervor at its disposal to cast even the biggest weakness of the Democratic ticket as a Republican weakness instead.

It is making a big dealout of Chuck Hagel's statement that it's 'a stretch' to say that Sarah Palin is qualified to be vice-president.

Why no word on the rather obvious point that it's just as big a stretch to say that Barack Obama is qualified to be president- and for the very same reasons?

If Palin is not qualified to be vice-president, Obama is not qualified to be president. It's as simple as that.

It's fascinating how the media have made what initially seemed a silly premise- that in view of Obama's lack of qualifications for the job, the experience level of the Republican candidate for vice-president could even be an issue- into a reality by ignoring the more serious…

Sadly for the country, I expect he'll stay there. While I don't want to demoralize the side, I have no doubt that Bush fatigue will determine the result of this election, and the dynamics were never right for an upset in the first place. Curiously, I don't think the unprecedented bias in the coverage of the campaign by the MSM will have much of an effect; poll after poll shows that the electorate recognizes it, and refuses to be affected by it.

But I'm afraid that we're about to see a well-qualified and honorable candidate defeated by the worst-qualified major party nominee in modern history. Such, alas, is the way political cycles work.

But I still think Obama will be a one-term president, less because of his own inexperience than because the problems he'll face would be insoluable even for a president who was qualified for the job. So, too, are political cycles.

On Nov. 15, 2004, Marine Sgt. Rafael Peralta and his unit were involved in a house-to-house battle with Iraqi insurgents in Fallujah. Shortly after entering one house, Sgt. Peralta was wounded several times- the most serious wound being in the head- by ricocheting bullets from the rifles of his fellow Marines. Eye-witnesses state that lying next to the fallen Peralta was a live grenade which threatened not only his own life, but those of his buddies. According to those eye-witnesses, the wounded Peralta scooped the grenade under his own body, absorbing the blast and saving his fellow Marines at the cost of his own life. The President of the United States subsequently singled Peralta out by name for special praise as an example of the heroism of our fighting men in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But not so fast. The military doctor who did the autopsy on Peralta's body claimed that one of the bullet wounds to his head would have been almost instantly lethal, and precluded any possibility of &…

It especially explains his view that McCain's forthright affirmation of justification by grace alone, for Christ's sake alone, through faith alone in that discussion was somehow trite and simplistic- and his bizarre misinterpretation of Rick Warren's question regarding McCain's personal religious beliefs as a request for some sort of abstract treatise on "the meaning of faith."

Though the scoffing has been very loud, for a very long time those with any contact with American political reality have been certain that any and all opposition to Barak Obama's candidacy would eventually be loudly attributed by the moonbats both in and out of the media to racism. It's the way the brain-dead Left works; it's easier to question the motives of others or to look down their noses at them or to call them nasty names than examine one's own prejudices and presuppositions.

And if Obama loses in November, I have absolutely no doubt that in addition to whining on the basis of no particular evidence that the Republicans have once again supposedly taken a page from the historic Democratic playbook and stolen the election, the loony Left will attribute his defeat to racism. But this piece of garbage by shrill, arrogant CNN leftist Jack Cafferty goes even farther.

McCafferty suggests that racism is the only reasonable explanation for the fact that the clearly less qu…

The Brewers' spectacularly stupid move in firing their manager during the last week in the season, while their team was still in contention, may well have demoralized the team and sent them the message that management had given up on them. But it certainly hasn't had whatever effect the Milwaukee management were trying for. The Bruins gave C.C. Sabathia his first defeat since coming over from the American League last night.

Any combination of four Cub victories and four Brewer losses in the thirteen remaining games clinches the Cubs' second consecutive National League Central championship.

They can clinch as early as tomorrow night. If they beat the Brewers again tonight, the number goes down to two- and sweeping the series Thursday night be all she wrote.

The Obama campaign- dedicated, like the mainline churches and liberal religion in general ,to the post-modern proposition that symbols need bear no relationship to the substance they are intended to stand for- are coming out with a line of "faith based" merchandise advertising "Believers for Obama," "Catholics for Obama," Pro-Family Voters for Obama," etc.

The problem here is that pointed out by the wise old pastor in Bo Giertz's The Hammer of God, when his new curate informed him that he- the curate- was a believer. "That's fine, my boy," the elderly man of God responded. "And what is it that you believe in?"

Unclear as they are on the concept, the Left just doesn't see that nobody is particularly impressed by "faith" simply because it's faith. And as long as the Obama campaign and the social Left continue to oppose the substance of the Christian tradition on life issues and to encourage a worldview that m…

For the record, I'll say here what I said before: if Barack Obama didn't mean to call Sarah Palin a pig- and I don't think he did- he still bears responsibility for using a metaphor which, in such temporal proximity to Palin's acceptance speech, could not help but be widely and quite naturally interpreted in that way.

He wasn't being rude. He was merely demonstrating once again that he is unready for prime time. But then, we already knew that; this incident was only one more example.

And yes, Obama did vote for a bill which included the following language:

Each class or course in comprehensive sex education in any of grades K through 12 shall include instruction on the prevention of sexually transmitted infections, including the prevention, transmission and spread of HIV.No, McCain's ad pointing that fact out did not lie. McCain did not lie when he point…

Only a little over a week ago, I was wondering whether the rotator cuff troubles of Cubs ace pitcher Carlos Zambrano would doom the Bruins' chances of ending their world championship draught at one hundred years.

The Cubs' series with the red-hot Houston Astros was moved by order of the Commissioner from hurricane-threatened Houston to- ironically- Milwaukee, the home of the Cubs' chief competition for the divisional title. Yesterday. in the first game of the series, Zambrano pitched on twelve days' rest- and pitched a no-hitter!

I think his arm might be just fine.

The Cubs' magic number for clinching their second consecutive National League Central Division championship: seven.

An investigation by the Washington Times has revealed that the record of Republican presidential nominee John McCain is more bi-partisan than that of his Democratic opponent, Barack Obama.

Not only that, but it isn't even close.

Obama is running as a "healer." His extreme position as the most liberal member of the Senate, with one of the most partisan voting records in that body, has always cast doubt on that self-characterization- a description which I've always believed far more accurately describes McCain, whose habit of reaching across the aisle in cooperation with Democratic collegues is legendary enough to have made him famously unpopular with his party's own right wing. And the record proves me right.

Obama, of course, is a card-carrying member of his party's left wing. Of course, there are very few Democrats who aren't (though admittedly there are admittedly a few- Sam Nunn comes to mind- who form a sort of vestigal center). More try to cultivate an …

The New York Post is reporting that Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama- who has campaigned for the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq ever since the beginning of his candidacy- tried behind the scenes to convince the Iraqi government to delay agreement on a schedule for the draw down of American troops in Iraq until after the election, when presumably he would be president!

The Obama camp's rhetoric in making the request, as quoted in the article, also seems clearly aimed at undermining the credibility and thus the diplomatic position of the current President of the United States for the sake of partisan partisan gain.

If true, Obama's actions are not only despicable, but differ from treason more in degree than in kind. And yes- it is illegal.

There is a reason why Barack Obama is in trouble with blue collar whites.

There is a reason why liberals are always in trouble with blue collar whites.

That reason is neither racism nor ignorance (the person who sent me the article I link to below speaks four languages, and has taken a considerable excursion down the road to his doctorate- yet reports having been called a "redneck" by leftists with a third of his education).

Several years ago, then New York Gov. Mario Cuomo made a silly speech about abortion that liberals have been hailing as a masterpiece of theological reasoning ever since.

Somehow, though, pro-choice Catholics have stopped quoting it. Perhaps, with the help of America's Catholic bishops, they realized wherethat argument leads: to the very conclusion Cuomo was trying to avoid.

Speaking at Notre Dame University Cuomo said that while he accepted the teachings of his Roman Catholic faith concerning abortion, he also had an obligation to uphold the law- and that he had no right to impose his religious beliefs on others. He could oppose abortion as a matter of private opinion, he said. But as a public official sworn to uphold the Constitution, he was obligated to support the political freedom to choose abortion that Constitution- at least as interpreted by the Supreme Court- guaranteed women considering abortion.

What Cuomo failed to reckon with is that the Roman Catholic faith teaches that…

Former Hillary Clinton aide Mark Penn has noticed the obvious: that the media are going after Sarah Palin with a passion they haven't displayed in "vetting" any of the other candidates. And Penn notes that the MSM is "losing credibility" as the result of the obvious double-standard.

Sure, Palin is a relative unknown. But then, so is Barak Obama- and no national candidate in memory has been the victim of as many inconsequential "gotchas" as Sarah Palin has in the past few weeks of, er...special treatment by the MSM.

Gerald Baker of The Times of London herein explains to his noncomprehending fellow Europeans why Barack Obama is in trouble in this election.

The reason is quite simple: the Obama of rhetoric bears absolutely no resemblance to the Obama of policy and practice.

He's not saying that Obama is a hypocrite. Instead, he's saying that the creature of Chicago's corrupt Democratic machine who has always refused to side with the reformers cannot now plausibly run as a reformer, and that the consistently partisan, party-line Democrat with the most liberal record in the U.S. Senate cannot credibly ignore his partisanship and extremism and run as a healer and a uniter.

Obama the idea is simply too big a disconnect from Obama the man. And that just doesn't go over all that well with the American people. Hence, the closeness of what, by most measurements, really shouldn't be a close race.

Look. I really believe Barak when he says that he didn't mean to call Sarah Palin a pig. I really do. The thing is, though, that you have to be more careful than to use a metaphor about pigs and lipstick such a short time after your opponent has given such a well-publicized speech comparing herself to a pit bull wearing lipstick. The temporal context makes your remarks look like a personal attack, whatever you actually intended.

And politicians who are ready for prime time know enough to avoid situations like that. You have to avoid making yourself look bad- especially when you mean no harm.

MACHIAVELLI: So that its subjects will view it with admiration, as a chicken which has the daring and courage to boldly cross the road, but also with fear, for whom among them has the strength to contend with such a paragon of avian virtue? In such a manner is the princely chicken's dominion maintained.

HIPPOCRATES: Because of an excess of light pink gooey stuff in its pancreas.

DERRIDA: Any number of contending discourses may be discovered within the act of the chicken crossing the road, and each interpretation is equally valid as the authorial intent can never be discerned, because structuralism is DEAD, DAMMIT, DEAD!

TORQUEMADA: Give me ten minutes with the chicken and I'll find out.

TIMOTHY LEARY: Because that's the only kind of trip the Establishment would let it take.

DOUGLAS ADAMS: Forty-two.

NIETZSCHE: Because if you gaze too long across the Road, the Road gaze…

Great article over at The American Spectator on the cultural extremism of the Olbermanns, Pelosis,and Bidens- with due attention paid to their penchant for ignoring science even while chiding cultural conservatives for allegedly doing so.

As the article notes, notional Catholics Pelosi and Biden base their (unsuccessful) attempts to place their pagan views on abortion, stem cell research, and similar matters within the bounds of Catholic teaching by citing arguments of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas which themselves can be squared with historical Catholic (and Christian) teachings only if one accepts the embryology of the Middle Ages!

Today Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn) offered this brilliant analogy on the floor of the U.S. House: "Jesus Christ was a community organizer (like Barack Obama). Pontius Pilate was a governor (like Sarah Palin)."

No, Rep. Cohen. Jesus was not a community organizer, and being an elected American governor does not put one on the same morallevel as Pontius Pilate.

And speaking of Pontius Pilate, Obama's Catholic running mate, Sen. Joe Biden- who professes as a practicing Catholic to believe that the unborn are living human beings, precious to God-suggested that Gov. Palin doesn't really love her Down's Syndrome child, Trig, because she doesn't support embryonic stem cell research.

Leaving aside the fact that nobody has yet discovered a way to do embryonic stem cell therapy without the risk of inducing cancer, and also the fact that other ways than harvesting living human embryos have been found to obtain pluripotent stem cells (just in recent weeks researchers achieved t…

He says that his comment implicitly calling Sarah Palin a pig was "innocent," and has accused the McCain campaign of "swiftboat politics" for crying foul.

Yes, "putting lipstick on a pig" is a common Washington term for dressing up something as new or different that's really the same old thing. But to use the phrase less than a month after Palin differentiated herself and other "hockey moms" from pitbulls soley by the use of lipstick constituted, at the very least, a case of Obama putting his foot in his mouth- once again- and for that, if for nothing else, he needs to apologize to Palin.

Obama badly needs to learn that even when your intentions are good, you're still responsible fo…

Meanwhile, it shouldn't pass notice that Keith Olbermann- who would have been fired if he had shown nearly as much partiality between baseball teams while a sportscaster as he showed between politicians not merely as a commentator, but as a news anchor- has been removed by MSNBC from his position as the latter.

The question is why he was ever allowed to compromise MSNBC's credibility by being assigned as a "journalist" to begin with- and even more amazingly, how he was allowed to be so patently non-objective in that role for so long.

Chris Matthews, whose embarassing favoritism toward Barak Obama during the Democratic primary (he famously remarked that every time he heard The One speak, he had "a thrill run up my leg"), was a model of objectivity and decorum next to Mr. Olbermann. But he, too, has been quite rightly removed from election night anchoring duties.

Here is a fine article by Michael Graham of the Boston Herald on the damage Barak Obama's acolyt…

That decision is a stinging affront to a subculture which tries to tell itself that having pre-natal Down's Syndrome ought to be a capital offense. And it's a resounding rebuke to a great many people for whom it is an article of faith that their convenience is more sacred than the life of an innocent, unborn child.

Add to that the way the electorate seems to have taken to Sarah Palin, and it's not hard to understand why the cultural Left is tearing its hair out. Add the approbation of the electorate for Palin, and the Left's collective guilty conscience must be driving it crazy.

BTW, I was really, really disappointed to learn that Andrew Sullivan was behind one of the scuzziest pieces of political slander in modern history: the silly and malicious lie that it was really Palin's seventeen year old daughter who is Trig's m…

BARACK OBAMA: The chicken crossed the road because it was time for a change! The chicken wanted change!

JOHN MC CAIN: My friends, that chicken crossed the road because he had the courage and the character to recognize that sometimes roads must be crossed. He recognized that a chicken's first duty is not to himself, but to his country- and my friends, the other side of the road is also his country.

HILLARY CLINTON: When I was First Lady, I personally helped that little chicken to cross the road. This experience makes me uniquely qualified to ensure right from Day One that every chicken in this country gets the chance it deserves to cross the road. But then, this really isn't about me.

GEORGE W. BUSH: We don't really care why the chicken crossed the road. We just want to know if the chicken is on our side of the road, or not. The chicken is either against us, or for us. There is no middle ground here.

Any third-grade level comment I might make about the image to the left would emulate pretty much the entire rhetorical arsenal leveled by Democrats against George W. Bush during the last eight years.

I'm not make such a comment, though. For one thing, I left third grade long ago. And besides, this provides a unique opportunity to shock any Democrat who may stumble across this blog with the realization that this sort of thing is neither particularly clever, nor- strictly speaking- actually an argument at all.

Looks like Z has tendonitis in his rotator cuff.If the news for Rich Harden is similarly good, the Cubs may still be in business. Still, getting both of these guys healthy ASAP is an absolute necessity. It's lucky that the Brewers keep losing whenever the Cubs do; otherwise this might actually turn out to be a race!

I've had enough drama, thanks- at least until October. We've waited for that world championship far too long.

Janet Daley of The Telegraph- a pro-choice feminist who has not been co-opted by what she rightly identifies as the "Marxist totalitarian" branch of that persuasion- pretty much says what needs to be said about the silly yet vicious attacks on Sarah Palin by those who have been so co-opted.

And if Daley does not quite get the Gospel right, well, at least she's closer to the mark than those Marxist totalitarians- many of whom teach in seminaries, some nominally Lutheran.

Today manager Lou Pinella admitted that co-ace Rich Harden also has a sore arm, and will miss a start.

Until now, the Cubs had to be considered the favorites to win the World Series in this centennial year of the last time they pulled it off. If we lose either of these guys, though, our chances decline drastically.

If we lose both, it's wait until next year- once again- and it'll be 101 years, and counting.

It's just a few years ago that year after year after year we were expecting the one-two punch of Mark Prior and Kerry Wood to take us to the promised land. But year after year, they both were hurt- and we had to make do with our number three pitcher, Zambrano, as our ace. Now that Zambrano has legitimately succeeded to that role, and another stellar number two brought aboard in Harden, it seems to be happening all over again.

Rep. Wexler and Dee Dee Meyers said last night- and both Larry King and the Obama campaign seemed to agree- that to notice that a prominent element of the American Left hates its own country and is both quite vocal about it is somehow to equate dissent with treason and, to in Dee Dee's words, to emulate Hermann Goering.

Sorry, Dee Dee... but Jeremiah Wright does not love America. Neither does a goodly portion of the nutroots. Neither do a great many on the far left wing of the Democratic party, that dominates it and calls the shots when it comes to policy.

This is not to deny that there are Democrats who dissent from the policies of the Bush administration and criticize America (often quite rightly), but who do love America. It's just to make the point that this is not true of all such, by any means- and that to call Republicans Nazis because they are not shy in pointing that out is not only out of line, but downright silly.

Note especially the question of experience, while reflecting that Gov. Palin has been selected to run only for vice-president- and Obama otherwise (has there ever been a lamer argument than the suggestion that the selection of Palin as a possible president sometime in the future in any way diminishes the issue of Obama's utter lack of qualifications to actually serve as President, as of January?).

Robert Elart Waters

,,,is a retired Lutheran minister who, except for his years in the ministry, has been a lifelong political activist who cannot be ideologically pigeonholed. He is a political independent and Neo-Moderate who believes that the incivility of our political discourse and the extremism and ideological rigidity of both political parties threatens our continued existence as a free people.